attendant birth-daemons in the Sparta museum,[1] Professor Samter suggests that the kneeling attitude during delivery brings the patient into connection with Mother Earth. But that the best medical authorities of antiquity disapproved of it shows only that it was commonly adopted, not necessarily that it had any religious or superstitious significance. I am aware that this attitude during delivery is adopted among many peoples in the Lower Culture. But in noting this fact Professor Samter apparently did not pause to enquire the proportion of these cases in which any religious significance was attached to the attitude. I can remember none where it is even suggested, and, whether Greek medical opinion was right or wrong, it seems to a layman an attitude which might naturally be adopted from motives of supposed convenience.
The first series of these valuable essays was noticed in these pages in December, 1909, and the third series in December, 1911; and the critical qualities, both constructive and destructive, as well as the wide learning of the author, evidenced in those volumes find admirable expression also in their companions.
In view of a recent article in Folk-Lore by Miss Partridge the opening essay of the first series on the Girdle of the Church will now be re-read with much interest. It deals with the practice of surrounding a church with a girdle of chains, silk or other stuff, or a long waxen taper. After analysis of several such customs the author comes to the conclusion that the object was to bind either some evil or the church and its sacred inhabitants. The patron
- ↑ To this statue may he added a damaged terra-cotta group, which was found in the course of the excavations conducted by the British School of Athens at Sparta. Like the analogous Cypriote terracottas, it seems to represent the goddess of childbirth with two attendant birth-daemons.
